Kingsolver

Our book club will discuss The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver next week. As big a fan as I am of her other works, this one felt like a slog to work through. The main character doesn't feel like the main character for the first half of the book, or so, I'm not sure that the theme or main idea of the book is a lacuna, and much of the beginning is not all that interesting to me.

Dropbox

Claire sent me an invitation to use Dropbox, a "cross-platform, cloud-based, storage application and service." One can have free 2 GB of storage, adding more free storage for inviting friends who open accounts. Since I use two computers (plus one at school), I thought I'd give it a try. I am putting items for teaching into the dropbox so I can have access to them wherever I have internet connection. If the site is not filtered at school, then I won't need a flash drive to have access to files I want to print. Also, when I have files that I continually update, and store them here, I won't have to continually replace them on the other computer.

I will probably also use it to share photos which you can do with people who have and don't have a dropbox account.

This could be good. If you want me to invite you, let me know!

Garden Salad

For tonight's potluck, we are taking a salad made up of mostly of items from our yard. The lettuce has been growing like crazy, as well as the spinach. The dressing has juice from our tangelos. Sweet tangerine slices come from our tree. If our walnut tree were still alive, perhaps we'd add some of those, but since it is gone, we'll add some from Trader Joe's, as well as cranberries from Sprouts. Perhaps I'll call it a Claremont Salad.

Falling Leaves

We have a large Chinese Elm (at least we've been told that's what it is - the pictures on the internet look different than what we have). A little over a year ago we had it cut back, as we do every few years. It's semi-deciduous, which I think means sometimes the leaves fall, but you're never quite sure when that will be. Well, it's been shedding its little tiny leaves like crazy for the past month or so. I have been raking them a bit at a time, but the leaves along the street have taken priority in the compost bin. Today I finally worked on the leaves in the mulch and all over the cottage yard. Two hours later, I got the vast majority of them (for now), but when the bin gets emptied next week, I'll be back finishing it up. That is, if the leaves stop falling at this crazy rate.

At least I am not shoveling snow!

Winter Harvest

Fresh lettuce and spinach from the garden for dinner tonight - it's winter in Southern California!

Turning it Around

School started again yesterday after Winter Break. As we came out of our string class at 5:00 yesterday, I noticed that it was much lighter (relatively) than it had been after our class in December. I'm always glad after the Winter Solstice to notice the lengthening days.

I took a little video in my class today which I have put on my music blog.

Claire's Photography

Claire has been developing her interest and talent in photography. Last semester she took beginning photography as well as digital imaging. Next semester she tackles intermediate photography. This photo was my Christmas present from Claire. The man is the accompanist (drummer) for the modern dance classes at Goucher.

In our basement we have had an enlarger for developing photos, given to us by Anne a number of years ago. While looking at the box with said enlarger, Claire discovered a small box with a variety of goodies, the best of which is a medium-format camera made in the 1950s. It's the same style as my very first brownie camera, though much nicer. You look down into the top of the camera to get your view. She'll have lots of fun with that.

You are invited to peruse her new flickr site here.

Avatar

I really wanted to like the movie Avatar. The buzz intrigued me, and I'm always up for a good story, especially science fiction. So, the visuals are pretty stunning with all the glowing plants, the smooth loping of the Na'vi as they maneuver through the trees and air, and how they made the Avatars really look like their human counterparts.

BUT. This 3D movie still has a 2D story. I kept thinking it was Dances with Wolves on a different planet. Good Guys vs. Bad Guys with nary a shade of gray.

This opinion is purely my own. Hal liked the movie more than I did.

Winter Garden

This is what's growing in our garden today: butter lettuce, spinach, mesclun mix (lettuce), broccoli, lemons, tangerines, tangelos. It's sunny and in the 70s today.

Happy New Year!

Old-fashioned family night tonight. Hal made popcorn the old-timey way on the stove in the dutch oven with oil. We played some games to go along with popcorn.

So far this is more successful than the Oregon Ducks were today in the Rose Bowl!